Orangi Pilot Project
Encyclopedia
The Orangi Pilot Project refers to a socially innovative
project carried out in 1980s in the squatter areas of Orangi Town
, Karachi
, Sindh
, Pakistan
. It was initiated by Akhtar Hameed Khan
, and involved the local residents solving their own sanitation
problems. Innovative methods were used to provide adequate low cost sanitation
, health
, housing
and microfinance
facilities.
The project also comprised a number of programs, including a people's financed and managed Low-Cost Sanitation
Program; a Housing Program; a Basic Health and Family Planning
Program; a Program of Supervised Credit
for Small Family Enterprise Units; an education
Program; and a Rural development
Program in the nearby villages.
Today, the project encompasses much more than the neighbourhood level problems. The research and development programmes under the institution
s developed by the project now covers wider issues related to the areas all over Karachi.
The programme proved so successful that it was adopted by the communities across developing countries. After the success of the initial phase, the program was expanded into four autonomous groups.
(1914–1999) was the founder and first Director of the project , and through his dynamic and innovative skills managed to bring modern sanitation to the squatter community of 1 million people. He had previously organized farmers' cooperatives and rural training centres and had served as an adviser to various development projects in Pakistan
.
He was also a research fellow and visiting professor at Michigan State University
(US), Director of the Pakistan Academy of Rural Development and Principal of Victoria College (Bangladesh
).
Comparing the OPP with his earlier Comilla project
, Akhtar Hameed Khan commented:
However, both projects followed the same research and extension methods.
OPP’s research revealed two significant factors; first, there was unlimited demand for products and services of these family units. Second, the family units were extremely competitive (on account of very low over heads and very cheap and docile labor). The working family units of Orangi were completely integrated with the main Karachi markets. In fact many units are supplying goods to famous firms, who just put their labels and make big profits. What is required is to support their initiatives.
Research further revealed that the production and employment in urban as well as rural areas could easily be increased provided the credit is accessible, as there was no shortage of market demand or productive labor. But they would not get credit at reasonable rate, because banks were inaccessible to them. The lack of bank credit forced them to buy raw materials at exorbitant prices while they had to sell their products at depressed prices and forego expansion.
On the basis of the research findings, Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) decided to arrange access to credit to these micro enterprises. For this Orangi Pilot Project – Orangi Charitable Trust (OPP – OCT) was established in 1989 as an independent and autonomous institution in Orangi, a low income settlement of over one million people. The main objective is to support people effort in their economic development by providing credit in urban and rural areas."
Social innovation
Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society....
project carried out in 1980s in the squatter areas of Orangi Town
Orangi Town
Orangi Town is a town in the northwestern part of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It is bordered by New Karachi Town to the north across the Shahrah-e-Zahid Hussain, Gulberg Town to the east across the Gujjar Nala stream, Liaquatabad Town to the south, and SITE Town to the west...
, Karachi
Karachi
Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the main financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million...
, Sindh
Sindh
Sindh historically referred to as Ba'ab-ul-Islam , is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran". Though Muslims form the largest religious group in Sindh, a good number of Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus can...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. It was initiated by Akhtar Hameed Khan
Akhtar Hameed Khan
Akhtar Hameed Khan was a Pakistani development activist and social scientist credited for pioneering microcredit and microfinance initiatives, farmers' cooperatives, and rural training programmes in the developing world. He promoted participatory rural development in Pakistan and other developing...
, and involved the local residents solving their own sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
problems. Innovative methods were used to provide adequate low cost sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
, health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...
, housing
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
and microfinance
Microfinance
Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....
facilities.
The project also comprised a number of programs, including a people's financed and managed Low-Cost Sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
Program; a Housing Program; a Basic Health and Family Planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
Program; a Program of Supervised Credit
Microcredit
Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
for Small Family Enterprise Units; an education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
Program; and a Rural development
Rural development
Rural development in general denotes economic development and community development actions and initiatives taken to improve the standard of living in non-urban neighbourhoods, remote villages and the countryside...
Program in the nearby villages.
Today, the project encompasses much more than the neighbourhood level problems. The research and development programmes under the institution
Institution
An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community...
s developed by the project now covers wider issues related to the areas all over Karachi.
The success
Orangi was a squatter community, and did not qualify for government aid due to their "unofficial" status. With endogenous research, the community was able to make an affordable sanitation system for the treatment of sewage, which helped to reduce the spread of disease. The system was created and paid for by the local community, who would not have had access to a sewer system otherwise.The programme proved so successful that it was adopted by the communities across developing countries. After the success of the initial phase, the program was expanded into four autonomous groups.
- The Orangi Pilot Project Society, to control funding for the other three groups.
- The Orangi Research and Training Institute, to manage the programme and provide training for onward dissemination.
- Orangi Charitable Trust, to manage microcreditMicrocreditMicrocredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
programmes. - Karachi Health and Social Development Association, to manage a health programme.
Foundation of Orangi Pilot Project (OPP)
Dr Akhtar Hameed KhanAkhtar Hameed Khan
Akhtar Hameed Khan was a Pakistani development activist and social scientist credited for pioneering microcredit and microfinance initiatives, farmers' cooperatives, and rural training programmes in the developing world. He promoted participatory rural development in Pakistan and other developing...
(1914–1999) was the founder and first Director of the project , and through his dynamic and innovative skills managed to bring modern sanitation to the squatter community of 1 million people. He had previously organized farmers' cooperatives and rural training centres and had served as an adviser to various development projects in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
.
He was also a research fellow and visiting professor at Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
(US), Director of the Pakistan Academy of Rural Development and Principal of Victoria College (Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
).
Comparing the OPP with his earlier Comilla project
Comilla Model
The Comilla Model was a rural development programme launched in 1959 by the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development...
, Akhtar Hameed Khan commented:
- "The Orangi Pilot Project was very different from the Comilla Academy. OPP was a private body, dependent for its small fixed budget on another NGO. The vast resources and support of the government, Harvard advisers, MSU, and Ford Foundation was missing. OPP possessed no authority, no sanctions. It may observe and investigate but it could only advise, not enforce." .
However, both projects followed the same research and extension methods.
Orangi Pilot Project – Orangi Charitable Trust (OPP – OCT)
"OPP-OCT discovered that this growing settlement of Orangi was full of the enterprising sprit. The most impressive demonstration of the spirit of enterprises is the creation of employment everywhere in the lanes; inside the homes there are around twenty thousand family units, shops workshops, peddlers and vendors. In response to the dual challenge of inflation and recession, the residents have invented working family, modifying homes into workshops, promoting the women from more dependents to economic partners and wage earners, abandoning the dominant patriarchal pattern with surprising speed.OPP’s research revealed two significant factors; first, there was unlimited demand for products and services of these family units. Second, the family units were extremely competitive (on account of very low over heads and very cheap and docile labor). The working family units of Orangi were completely integrated with the main Karachi markets. In fact many units are supplying goods to famous firms, who just put their labels and make big profits. What is required is to support their initiatives.
Research further revealed that the production and employment in urban as well as rural areas could easily be increased provided the credit is accessible, as there was no shortage of market demand or productive labor. But they would not get credit at reasonable rate, because banks were inaccessible to them. The lack of bank credit forced them to buy raw materials at exorbitant prices while they had to sell their products at depressed prices and forego expansion.
On the basis of the research findings, Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) decided to arrange access to credit to these micro enterprises. For this Orangi Pilot Project – Orangi Charitable Trust (OPP – OCT) was established in 1989 as an independent and autonomous institution in Orangi, a low income settlement of over one million people. The main objective is to support people effort in their economic development by providing credit in urban and rural areas."
Publications
- Perween Rahman, 2004, Katchi Abadis of Karachi: A survey of 334 katchi abadis – Existing situation, problems and solutions related to sewage disposal, water supply, health and education. Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute. Sama Publishing. ISBN 969-8784-09-8
- Arif Hasan, 2000, Scaling Up of the Orangi Pilot Project Programs: successes, failures and potentials, City Press, Karachi.
- Arif Hasan, 1999, Akhtar Hameed Khan and the Orangi Pilot Project, City Press, Karachi.
- Akhtar Hameed Khan, 1996, Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflection, Oxford University Press, Karachi
- Arif Hasan, 1993, Scaling Up of the OPP’s Low Cost Sanitation Program, Research Training Institute, Karachi.
See also
- Akhtar Hameed KhanAkhtar Hameed KhanAkhtar Hameed Khan was a Pakistani development activist and social scientist credited for pioneering microcredit and microfinance initiatives, farmers' cooperatives, and rural training programmes in the developing world. He promoted participatory rural development in Pakistan and other developing...
- Comilla Project
- Karachi Health and Social Development Association
- MicrocreditMicrocreditMicrocredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
- MicrofinanceMicrofinanceMicrofinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....
- Orangi Charitable Trust
- Orangi Pilot Project Society
- Orangi Research and Training Institute
- Orangi TownOrangi TownOrangi Town is a town in the northwestern part of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It is bordered by New Karachi Town to the north across the Shahrah-e-Zahid Hussain, Gulberg Town to the east across the Gujjar Nala stream, Liaquatabad Town to the south, and SITE Town to the west...
- Social innovationSocial innovationSocial innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society....
External links
- Orangi Pilot Project (OPP)
- List of publications by OPP Research and Training Institute
- OPP's Microcredit Program
- Orangi (self-help) Pilot Project
- UNESCAP Good Practices Suite Example
- Orangi Welfare Project (Trust) – A grassroots NGO inspired by the OPP
- A WaterAid report describing a mapping project associated with the Orangi Pilot Project